western bureau

The year 2006 was yet another dismal one for sports in western Jamaica as our limited successes were minuscule in comparison to the string of disappointments, which characterised most of our sporting endeavours.

Although football remained quite popular, the region's only noteworthy achievements were Frome Technical High School's gaining their first hold on the Ben Francis Knockout schoolboy football title and St. James High School doing likewise in the Malta Under-14 competition for rural high schools.

I know that members of the track and field fraternity will probably want to take exception to the above assessment as it could be argued that the 2006 Milo Western Relays was a well organised and well-executed event.

Quite a challenge

However, staged against the backdrop of the substandard conditions at the unfinished Catherine Hall Stadium, the event was quite a challenge for both participants and fans.

One probably could also argue with some amount of justification that the coming on stream of the new Trelawny multi-purpose stadium, which will host the opening ceremony for the 2007 ICC Cricket World Cup, was another major accomplishment since the region now has a world-class facility capable of hosting both Test matches and One-Day International (ODI).

However, while the possibilities are exciting for the Trelawny stadium, with the Caribbean getting only a limited number of Test matches and ODIs per year, it is unlikely that the new facility will get more than an occasional game. In fact, based on the customary, 'Kingston is Jamaica', mindset of the Jamaica Cricket Board (JCB), the facility could well become a white elephant.

Lack of goodwill

In terms of disappointment, the unfinished Catherine Hall stadium, which is poised to move into yet another year as a monument of government's lack of goodwill towards the people of Montego Bay, tops the list. Insofar as I am concerned, if the facility had gotten its just attention, it would have been completed long ago.

While it is true that the US$11 million, which the Venezuelan government recently granted to complete the Catherine Hall facility should speed up the process, based on the many broken promises of the recent past,I don't think it would be a safe bet to make any prediction about what is likely to happen at this facility this year.

Dismal showing

The dismal showing by Wadadah FC, Seba United and Village United in the early stages of the 2006-2007 Wray & Nephew NPL Football Competition is yet another area of grave disappointment. Based on the team's pre-season preparations, one expected them to have acquitted themselves much better but unfortunately that did not happen.

Currently, only Reno FC, no second place in the 12-team NPL point-standing, seem to have a glimmer of a chance of bringing any NPL glory to the west. With the other three teams all hovering just above the relegation zone, anxiety is already growing among fans as they begin to ponder whether or not we will still have four teams in the league at the end of the season.

As we look forward to welcoming some of the world's best cricketers, who will be involved in warm-up matches in the region ahead of the 2007 ICC Cricket World Cup, let us hope that we will do enough to showcase our awesome tourism potential in the hope that we will be able to spark future sports and commercial investments.

Insofar as local sporting endeavours are concerned, I would like to use this opportunity to wish the leadership of all the region's sporting associations a productive sporting personalities to make the re-capturing the sporting glory of the past their top priority.